Is Quantum Linear Superposition an Exact Principle of Nature? by Angelo Bassi, Tejinder Singh, and Hendrik Ulbricht

Very interesting and clear. Your proposal seems to solve many very difficult problems at the foundation of quantum theory. I wish you luck in the contest, and above all, in the development of your research programme.

Best Regards

Daniel

Thank you for the explanation of your position.

Dear Authors:

Thank you for responding to my comment, but you have missed the key point which is at the heart of the quantum paradoxes. The quantum diffraction experiments (all referenced in my essay) are obviously correct, but their interpretation is based on an assumption that is incorrect. As described in my essay, and referenced to the work of Van Vliet, the scattering of a neutron requires a quantum transition of the crystal, which in turn requires a quantized momentum transfer to a degenerate phonon with momentum hG, where G is a reciprocal lattice vector. This gives rise to the classical wave diffraction result, but does NOT require an incident coherent wave. The same is true for an atom, molecule, or buckyball. They are all localized particles, not extended phase-coherent waves. (This is in contrast to electron and photon waves, which really are extended coherent waves with linear superposition.) I realize that this is heresy, but that is exactly the point of this FQXi essay contest - to question assumptions that no one ever questions. Please read my essay more carefully. I have taken great pains to explain everything clearly and consistently. I would be happy to discuss this offline, if that would be appropriate. My email is given in my bio.

Alan M. Kadin, Ph.D.

Dear Alan Kadin,

"The FQXi contest would seem to be an ideal venue to explore such concepts, but this has drawn relatively little attention."

Perhaps you meant the attention to your essay rather than to the contest. Be sure you explained your remarkable result clearly, consistently, and understandably enough as to persuade any unbiased reader. Your essay was the only one that I called more convincing than quantum logics while everybody so far called my essay overly critical.

I hope, those who read uncommon or even heretical ideas will memorize them and eventually be in position to judge independent of the crowd.

Concerning the discrete vs. analog or linear vs. non-linear issue I would like to iterate what I tied to make aware of in the previous contest where it got unnoticed among more than 400 posts:

Cosine or Fourier transformations are non-linear integral transformations that render a continuous function of (elapsed or anticipated as elapsed) time into a discrete function of (likewise positive) frequency and vice versa.

Regards,

Eckard

Please:

I show by experiment in this essay contest how quantum theory is an approximation. My experiments refute the Born rule. A singly emitted gamma-ray should go one way or another at a beam splitter, but I show coincident detection exceeding chance. Similarly for an alpha-ray. This supports the Loading Theory, which was misrepresented and misunderstood for ~70 years, which is why no one considers it. There are two problems:

(1) There are accepted experiments that may be adjusting things to favor QM, and also that researchers have not looked for certain artifacts. A good example is macromolecule diffraction. I do not expect a macromolecule could load up. My experiments and analysis indicate the universe is not crazy and that macromolecules are real particles. But atoms can take on either a wave state or a particle state. My enhanced version of the Loading Theory can explain wave-particle duality up to at least atoms. Physicists may think a macromolecule is neutral, but it is easily charged. It is very likely that many experiments are looking at field deflection effects. To further back my claims, I analyzed one of the Vienna experiments in my essay, and cite several anomalies that do not fit diffraction theory.

(2) The other problem is that my work is so sensational that you are not likely to take it seriously unless other physicists examine it. I have been offering to demonstrate to physicists for 10 years and have performed public demonstration of the gamma-split experiment with little recognition. What I have is for-real and I go with full confidence to face any scrutiny. I made an offer to demonstrate to FQXI people in Brendan Foster's blog on the essay contest.

Please be careful: I do not need to be the one to say bad things about physicists who embrace quantum weirdness because they are invested in it. Now we have a good experimental reason to resolve the paradox instead of embracing it. The history that has misled generations of physicists is in my essay. We no longer need acts of desperation, like superluminal magical collapse of the wave function, etc.

Please see A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory. Also please see Ragazas' paper that supports the Loading Theory.

Thank you, Eric Reiter, September 12, 2012.

Dear Angelo, Tejinder, and Hendrik,

You present a very good idea, all the more so because of the very realistic possibility of experimental verification in the near future. I don't know if it's right, but the case you present for pursuing this direction is quite convincing. Indeed, I hope it's wrong, because it would wreck some of my own ideas about quantum gravity! The universe is oblivious to such considerations, however. A few questions and comments:

1. Presumably this provides an arrow of time, since collapse is irreversible, but perhaps time in this sense fades out of the picture on the fundamental scale where the superposition lifetime becomes infinite?

2. I'm sure this has been addressed, but it seems that there might be some issues involving things like locality and "microscopic constituents" of "macroscopic systems." Roughly speaking, how does a microscopic system "know" if it is supposed to preserve its own superposition or recognize that it is part of a larger system, which must collapse? One of the main points of the decoherence explanation of the measurement problem is that one must consider microstate, apparatus, and environment simultaneously. I am wondering how this all fits together.

3. You mention Adler's view that it's the wrong approach to quantize classical dynamics. This may be correct, but it seems to me that it is simply a choice of assumptions: does one start with the correspondence principle, in which case classical physics is viewed as a limit of quantum theory, or does one start with the superposition principle, in which case quantum theory is built up from classical alternatives? Perhaps the experiments you mention will settle this one way or the other.

4. I will have to look at your reference by Oreshkov et al., to see exactly what they mean by "order." Again, this might wreck my own ideas if it is right.

5. I don't expect that you will agree much with my own approach, but if you're interested to see the motivation for my questions, my submission is here: On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics.

Thanks for the interesting read. Take care,

Ben Dribus

Dear Dr. T P Singh,

Thanks for your beautifully written enchanting essay. It contains up to date information on QM and its various versions. I, too, have my own version of QM and to know this,please, go through my essay (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1543--Sreenath) and express your comments on it in my forum. It is continuation of my last year's essay.

In your essay, you have expressed your views with crystal clarity and also proposed an experiment to verify it. However, I feel that, currently there is lot of confusion in distiguishing between the classical world and the quantum one. This confusion,it appears,has arisen as a result of the failure to realise the seperate fundamental traits laying behind both worlds. If we realise this dichotomy then the results of your experiment become obvious before conducting it.

Best regards and good luck in the essay contest.

Sreenath

Dear Tejinder Singh and collaborators

Thank you for your essay, which presents a lot of material completely new to me. We seem to be thinking on the same lines.

I tried to describe a possible form for the kind of nonlinear theory which you suggest. It starts from the notions that

- space-time may have an asymmetric metric $g$ and an asymmetric connection $\nabla$.

From the metric, one can derive (at least) two interesting algebraic features. One is a model of the complex numbers, so $i^2 = -1$. The other is an element $R$ of a Hopf algebra discovered by Dubois-Violette and Launer. $R$ satisfies the "Quantum Yang-Baxter" equation.

$g$ and $\nabla$ are constrained by insisting that

- $\nabla i = 0$ and $\nabla R = 0$.

A solution is a pair $(g, \nabla)$ for which

- the Yang-Mills functional is stationary under all small variations of $g$ and $\nabla$ for which $\nabla i$ and $\nabla R$ are stationary.

There are other variants of this model.

A "particle" is a basic solution, an eddy in the geometry of space-time.

I have no evidence that real physics is like this, but it seems to offer all the apparatus one would expect: variational calculus, Hopf algebras. It fits naturally with general relativity. Solutions $(g, \nabla)$ may form a smooth manifold whose tangent spaces are the Hilbert spaces of quantum mechanics. If so, it seems likely that superpositions of states are unstable, as you suggest.

I would be glad to hear any views you may have on all this.

Best wishes

Alan H.

Angelo et al.

Fascinating essay. I disagree with proofs of Bells inequalities but that does no affect the substance, and I agree Optomechanics and Trace Dynamics, both consistent with my own fully mechanistic approach to causal unification, using a " radical rethink of how we comprehend quantum theory, and the structure of spacetime."

I suggest matter can be superposed in terms of additivity, i.e. fluids. Fine sawdust is additive, and at a larger scale 3 billion tables may be equally additive.

Have you considered superposition as long term macroscopic evolution subject to binding energy, so rigidity (viscosity) is the key variable?

And ref the twin slit molecular results; Have considered that molecules may propagate photons on surface interaction at the dense surface electron fine structure slit edges?

I've been discussing a simple causal re-interpretation of the measurement problem and the Copenhagen interpretation based on the mechanism of detection as 'sampling' and modulation discussed in my essay. I hope you'll get a change to read and discuss.

Best wishes

Peter

Tejinder,

You and your collaborators have done a superb job of explaining why continuous function physics is very much alive, even with all the success of quantum theory over the years.

Nice! Thanks for an essay I am sure to read a few more times.

I hope you get a chance to visti my essay site ("The Perfect First Question.")

Best,

Tom

Dear Angelo Bassi, Tejinder Singh and Hendrik Ulbricht,

I enjoyed your essay. It is very clearly written and accessible.I particularly like the thought provoking questions that you have at the beginning and where you end up, suggestion a possible need to reconsider the relationship of the wave function with space-time.It is good that you are able to propose detailed practical work that will support the presented idea. Good luck in the competition.